My brother-in-law's brother-in-law used to be quite the sportsman. My oldest sister visited with their family this past weekend and texted me only this, "Do you want BiL's shotgun shells?" Um, sure! I have no idea what I'm getting, but my mom left me a voicemail: "I've got these shotgun shells for you. It's quite a bit." Hmmm.
This should be probably be a rant but fits better here: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/call-for-...k47-seen-in-martin-place-20150611-ghlch1.html Sweet fucking Jesus... Just on the size alone its obviously a fucking toy, not mention its probably made out of that cheap super shiny plastic most kids toys are made of I wish i could bitch slap some of these fuckwits back into reality
Stupid all around. Questionable parenting x knee jerk legislation = shithawks are coming. Spoiler: Spoiler Call me crazy but I think kids having super realistic gun toys is a bad idea. Teaches bad habits (how many people do you know will instantly put their finger on the trigger of a gun or wave the muzzle around completely unaware of what they're doing?) and normalizes pointing a gun at people, which is not good. Maybe a bright lime green Nerf gun or Super Soaker is one thing but an AK-47 as a toy? Sure you can do what you want, but I don't like it. Just makes me cringe. I'd rather see kids shooting BB guns, etc. and learning how to respect firearms. I was in Nebraska a couple of weeks ago and made a trip to the tractor shed tunnel range I've shot in a few times and had a good time. Somehow the best target of the day came from my Suhl despite there being a couple of nice custom built rifles there too. I finally have that rifle to the point where I can just set it up and shoot without fucking around with anything and expect competitive results, after a few years of testing and tuning. Spoiler: Target shooting pics After my standard cleaning routine with the Suhl, this was the first five shots down the bore. The first shot will reliably go about 3/4" low but the rest went into a one hole group. A good start to the day. Best target of the day: Some nice custom rifles: Stiller 2500X with a Shilen barrel and Nightforce 12-42x56 scope Kimber K22 with a Shilen barrel and Leupold 40x45 scope- you don't see many of these turned into full blown benchrest guns and it was fun to shoot. I love the little Mauser-style claw extractor. KIDD .22lr with a Lilja barrel and Leupolc 40x45 scope.
From the article: "NSW Police Minister Troy Grant said the government was considering legislation to stop toy guns from being misused by criminals." Wow. Your society has been neutered to the point that criminals can just use toy guns to rob people, and politicians have to pass a law to regulate toy guns. Why would a new law stop the criminals if they're already doing something illegal?
Same thing with real guns, but people don't see that. But I am sure that is what you were getting at.
Yeah tell me about it.. Its out of control Im currently going through the process to buy a real handgun for practical pistol shooting and the process will take about 2 years all up (i could do it a bit quicker if i didnt have real life getting in the way of my hobbies but not by much). Don't get me wrong, i don't want to go the other way either, there SHOULD absolutely be hoops you need to jump through and training you MUST take before anyone should be allowed a handgun but 2 fucking years is crazy. Especially when i know some very shady people that i used to go to school with that could get me an illegal handgun within a week (at a massive price premium of course)... Id never do it of course but its frustrating as hell to know the only people being inconvenienced by these laws are law abiding citizens and would be gun owners/hobbyists @katokoch I absolutely agree with your sentiments on giving kids realistic toy guns. Having been taught to respect firearms from an early age i never saw them as toys, they are a tool (and a very dangerous one at that) but down here most people have been so far removed from any kind of gun culture or exposure to guns for so long i dont think people have that mindset anymore...
I am back up and running after moving into a new place just a couple of weeks ago, and am loving the new workspace. It is not yet complete, as I still have to build in a heavy workbench and some shelves, and install a dust collection system, but I can still be productive in the meantime. Something I had to take care of before moving on to more shaping work on the 40X project was finalizing the shape for the cheekpiece and grip so it can all work with the checkering pattern I have in mind. After some sketching and trying different angles, here we are. So now I am reshaping the cheekpiece a bit and starting to carve in the curved shapes of the grip and transitions to the rest of the stock. Tomorrow I am going to dig into reshaping a bright green laminated 10/22 carbine stock too. Fun stuff. Here's a look at the rest of my shop today. Spoiler: Pics Buck approves! There's been some development with the next full custom project I'll be working on too, which will be a Remington Rolling Block single shot rifle- a 150+ year old design. In contrast of the .22s I've been working on, this rifle will be a .45-70. Big bore time. Fuck yeah. If I can't have an old school buffalo rifle of my own, a commission to build one is second best. Icing on the cake is an octagon profile barrel and a dense Australian walnut blank again, which will be ideal for handling heavy recoil. Spoiler: Rolling Block pics Should end up along these lines. I'm getting lots of freedom again to shape it as I please, so we'll see how it goes.
What could be more patriotic than spending my Independence day weekend working on guns? I dunno, maybe if I had a bald eagle in the shop with me. I've been pouring time into the 40X so it was good to switch gears for a bit and work on something different- this time a stainless 10/22 carbine with a blue/green laminate stock. I'm sharpening up the stock and doing a little work on the metal too. First task was attacking the stock with a plane and rasp. Spoiler: Pics Made everything flush with the hardware, which is never the case on a factory 10/22. Cut flutes into the comb where it meets the grip for looks and feel and shaped a sharp valley transition between the toe line and bottom of the grip too (purely for looks). A little bit of carving goes a long way there. Then the fore-end needed to be slimmed down and the tip rounded off. So here we are now. Nothing radical, but a little more refined than the clubby carbine form and good use of a morning off from work. The 40X stock saw a lot of shaping and slimming over the weekend too. After inletting the trigger guard another 3/16" deeper, I was able to shave a ton of wood off the underside of the fore-end and through the grip to really liven it up. It currently weighs 8.5 lbs with a scope and feels nothing like any .22 off the shelf, which is basically the goal. Spoiler: More pics
Its probably a good thing for my financial well-being that I haven't been to any gun shows. No, definitely. I started fitting the bolt with the 40X stock I've been working on after a lot of additional carving work and really like how the custom bolt handle and safety transform the look. Classy as fuck compared to the factory Remington parts, to say the least. Gotta fix the curve and shape of the cheekpiece and shadowline, but I do like the direction its headed in. Turned my hands black from polishing stock hardware for a few hours yesterday too. Always fun when that happens.
I think my old .38 revolver has gotten just a hair out of time. I shot it three times this morning at a few feral dogs and each time I got struck with what felt like metal shavings just below my left eye. If it were you, would that be your diagnosis? It's an old, cheap, not a name brand, snubnose .38 that isn't worth getting repaired. I'm trying to figure out what to do with it. Turn it over to the police? Cut it up with my own torch and trash it? I don't want it blowing up in my hand and I won't sell it to anyone so that it puts others in danger in the same way. So I don't get reamed by any dog lovers, they are indeed feral, and have already killed my goat that I kept to eat the briers around our barn.
That's exactly what I mean. He heated that thing to the point where the whole lower was drooping and he could still get it to fire. I wonder how far it could have gone before catastrophic failure? (Nobody ever really wants to find that out, but it sure would have been interesting.)
I like numeric's idea, but otherwise I'd cut the frame up with a torch and put big holes in the cylinders if you want to really render it useless. Impressive. "How badass is that?!" I love how much fun he's having with it too. I got a package from Australia last week containing the walnut blank that will be used for the Remington Rolling Block I'll be working on next. It is gorgeous and dense, which is a necessity for a .45-70. The real kicker is the year the tree was milled... 1982. So, this lumber is seven years older than I am. I think it's safe to say it's well cured by now.
Looks like I missed all the local gun buy-backs. Last one I can find was in 2013, no mention of future events. I did find an article stating that my state's law enforcement cannot destroy functional, properly serial numbered firearms. That law was passed just before the 2013 buy-back, perhaps that's why they quit having them, they have to keep the guns nobody wants. I am looking forward to shopping for a new one, probably another revolver, to replace it.
Here's a crappy cell phone pic of the 10/22 I've been working on (see above) as it nears completion. This is after I've stripped and polished the stock hardware and trigger guard so all of the metal is matching and looks clean, and started putting sealer coats on the stock prior to topcoating with urethane. Still making progress on the 40X too. It may be tough to tell but I shaved off nearly 1/8" from the sides of the grip and a whole bunch from the underside of the fore-end so it actually feels like a slim and lively sporter now. Got a lot of fine shaping work left to do, but I am happy with it at this point (a rare thing). Couldn't resist wiping some mineral spirits on to see what the wood grain looks like at this point. I'll be adding a bit of an old school reddish tint (per client request) with a traditional Alkanet root based color in the finish.